Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game What was your best hunt?

.375 H&H

Shooting 300 gr Swift A-frames and 300 GR.A-Square Monolithic solids.

Man, I have hundreds of thrilling hunts but when I was 22 I went on a one month solo backpack hunt into Stone's Sheep country, I had not been before.
At that age I was a machine. I had to walk back to the Alaska highway to resupply at one point.
I saw no one, lots of rams and missed a dandy.
Sometimes we miss- the trip was great.

That's just awesome all the way around. Fantastic pic.

Here is a link to the details of what is probably my best hunt. I spent many days in this particular area after a big bear (as noted in the original post I figured there was a big one based on all the piles of big bear poo) hunting solo with my 45 Colt Ruger Bisley and called in the bear and was able to shoot my oldest bear to date. He was 17 years old so he was born the year I moved to Walla Walla which was also kind of cool.

https://www.24hourcampfire.com/ubbt...07/tagged-my-10th-bear-today#Post3307307

Mountain goat with pack goats last year was pretty cool.

https://www.24hourcampfire.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php/topics/14162316/7-in-8-out#Post14162316

Thanks Johnny!

been on a lot of great big game hunts , but when i am with my son in the mountains out west these are always great !

It's hard to choose a 'best'. One memorable one was when a friend from the east came out to try for his 1st mule deer. We packed in several miles with my llamas, his 1st trip using pack animals. On about the 3d day without seeing anything, we took a long high trail that made a loop. At the far end of the loop, I looked back behind us and spotted a medium sized mulie on a side ridge. We were able to work our way back and he shot it...except 'it' wasn't 'it'. It was a smaller one that we hadn't seen before. We got it down to the trail and came back up the next morning with a couple llamas to pack it back to camp. The size didn't matter. He was more than proud of it and we had a ball getting it done.

That looks really cool.

Best one was when my buddy shot a muley in NDak. He had moved out there a couple years prior for work. I flew out and pheasant hunted for a week with him then went with him deer hunting. I didnt have a deer tag but got to see him make a hell of a shot on a really decent muley at 300 yds. Was my first experience being on a hunt out west (im a flatlander from Michigan). Didnt realize how much bigger a big muley is than the little does I shoot here until I grabbed an antler and tried to drag it.

It was about 33 degrees and spitting rain, pellets, and snow. By the time we got that deer back to the truck I was down to a t-shirt. What was even better was we got to back track and try to find his binoculars that had somehow got left halfway to the truck.

My first Moose. Shot it in Vermont in 2003.

I moved to a new home where a crow was every morning eating song bird chicks on the roof top.
I put a pile of bird seed in my driveway and set up a blind in my car port.
I was in a chair, the a rifle in a rifle rest, with the pellet gun already pointed at the seed pile.
I sat there reading a book for an hour.
Two crows landed on the seed pile and started eating.
I waited for them to get lined up and shot a hole through both of their chests with one shot.
The song bird chick eating stopped.

Amen. I've got so many good ones. Some of the best, I didn't even fill a tag.

Best deer?


The Savage Speaks Again

Best turkey?


Turkey Camp 2002

Probably be my first elk hunt out in Colorado. My buddy had a bunch of frequent flyer miles, so we flew into Denver on those tickets and met up with some SD and WY buddies out there. The airline cancelled our flight out of Minneapolis to a later one and we got out there just in time to buy our otc licences. We got the last rental vehicle available which was a robins egg blue Delta 88, not a perfect mountain car for where we were going. The camp was set up "lower" at about 8,500 when we got there and the next morning a WY. friend with the horses told me which horse was mine. Well, all I knew about horses was from watching westerns on TV. The horse knew that I didn't know the first thing about driving one so we pretty much just fed our way up the mountain together. I was coming down in the saddle when he was coming up and after two days of that, I'd had enough. I tried walking him like a dog on a leash, but he went weeeee and pbbbbb all the time and I was never going to see an elk that way, at least not the front half of one. I borrowed one of the trucks and walked up into the mountains after that. It snowed and moved in some elk later in the week. The other guys had cow tags and were filled up. Later in the week tired and going through the motions again I was walking a horse trail about mid day when I saw a drop of blood in the snow among the horse tracks. Must have creased himself with a stick I figured. Twenty yards farther was another drop then wait a minute, that "horse" has a cloven foot print! That isn't a horse! I took the track because it was going where I was when it left the trail and went down into some black timber they call it out there. Fresh snow with a big fresh track and just me. Elk hunting nirvana. Long trail back and forth and a brush pile up ahead turned into antlers on an elk bedded and looking in the other direction. Even a blind squirrel finds an acorn now and then. 7mm RM and a 160 Nosler Partition with a high neck shot. At the shot the elk leaps to his feet and runs off to my right and I'm thinking these elk are way tougher than I thought to take a hit like that. A second shot broadside and he stops and splays out his legs as if to say is that all you got? A third shot and he is down for the count. Holy smokes are those animals ever big. He has five on one side and six on the other. Then I see that my "neck" shot had hit him squarely in the right antler. That must have rung his bell some. Some other hunter had just grazed him under the leg earlier. My rancher buddy packed him out on two horses and I had a new appreciation for one horse power especially up in that thin air altitude. Come to find out that Delta Airlines does not take elk heads with antlers as packed or carry on luggage. My western buddies were nice enough to eat my elk for me and the antlers got back here eventually. Long winded post, but what else is there to do on a rainy Sunday afternoon for a guy my age?

Good story. Thanks for sharing.

KUGURUROK

In 2007, Bill and I went to hunt Caribou on the Kugururok River, which is a tributary of the Noatak River, north of Kotzebue. Most people call it the Kugurok or just the Kug. The Noatak River is a world class river, at times half a mile wide, and a thousand miles long. But most people have never heard of it because it’s so remote. At the time, the Northwest Alaska Caribou Herd was 400,000 strong.
We arranged for a one-way bush plane flight and for rental of a raft, then flew on Alaska Airlines into Kotzebue. The next leg of the trip was a bush plane flight onto the upper Kugururok River. The pilot landed on a gravel bar and when that plane left, we realized just how remote we were, 150 miles north of the Arctic Circle and over seventy miles from the nearest people.
We were on a side braid of the river and we wanted to get in to the main stream that evening. So, we inflated the raft and floated down the side braid. In Alaska it’s illegal to hunt on the same day that you fly. While we were negotiating the side braid a herd of a couple hundred caribou crossed the river in front of us and another herd about the same size crossed the river behind us. We had to accomplish a short portage to get into the main flow and we set up camp ½ mile down-river from there.
We camped in the river bottom and while we were setting up camp, we saw lots of ‘bou and some big bulls strolling along the rim, less than a hundred yards away. There’s a lot of vegetation, willows and alders, in the river bottom. But above the rim it’s all open country; muskeg, marsh mounds and in the distance, we could see low hills. We decided to try our luck tomorrow morning, from that location.
At first light, we climbed the rim and looked out onto that open country and we saw thousands of caribou. Not one big herd, rather many smaller herds; a hundred here, a couple of hundred there, smaller groups everywhere. But there was no cover for us to hide in and they were all out of rifle range. The animals were generally moving to the west and the river was flowing south. We hiked along the rim until we came to a small gully that the caribou were crossing. Bill and I sneaked up that gully on our hands and knees, until we were about a hundred yards out into the open country. We peeked over the edge of the gully and watched as hundreds of critters were generally meandered in our direction.
I saw a nice big bull that was going to cross the gully a hundred and fifty yards east of us and I told Bill “that’s the one I want.” He said “OK. I’ll wait for a bigger one.” When the bull crossed the gully, he was just east of us and the morning sun was shining behind him. I carefully placed my first shot in his lungs and the spray from the exit wound sparkled in the sunlight. It was visible for just a few seconds but, I’ll never forget the site of that spray glistening in the sun. My bull was resting in the bottom of the gully and the approaching animals couldn’t see us in the gully. As I was field dressing the kill, Bill removed the cape and antlers. When everything was butchered and bagged and ready to be carried back to camp, Bill started hunting again. He saw a bull, bigger than mine and decided to take him. The bull was not approaching the gully as close as Bill wanted so he crawled on his hands and knees then slithered his way, on an intercept angle, toward the bull. He shot him at about 100 yards. So, we had two bulls down before noon on the first day that we could hunt.
We were only about a mile from camp but, there was a field of marsh mounds between us and camp. I was reminded just how much I dislike hiking across them. It took two trips to get the animals back to camp. The arctic twilight lasts so long that we still had enough light to negotiate our way through the swampy ground when we finally got the second load to camp at 9:30pm.
The next morning, we packed up camp and began the long float trip back to civilization. We weren’t going all the way to Kotzebue, because that would require us to weave our way through the myriad channels of the Noatak Delta and then to row our way across the open ocean and Kotzebue Sound. But we still had 70 miles of river between us and the little bush community of Noatak Village. We spent nine hours on the river and traveled 23 miles on the first day. Bill’s GPS said we were traveling at 3 miles/hour. That seemed reasonable because we were close to the river banks on each side and could see the territory passing beside us. We passed Kayak Lake and Trail Creek at about 1,000 feet elevation. Fall had already appeared where we were hunting because there had been a hard freeze at that higher elevation. But when we passed through 1,000’ elevation, summer returned along with lots of insects, and the caribou disappeared. We traveled 23 miles that day and camped just a couple of miles north of the Noatak River.
It would probably take two more days of floating to make it to Noatak Village. So, we started the second day of floating as soon as we could get ourselves going. Bill caught a big silver salmon and hung it on his stringer in the river. After only a short time, we arrived at the Noatak River and stopped for some more fishing, then moved out onto the wide Noatak. The River seemed about half a mile wide at this point and even though we could read the GPS unit that said we were still going about 3 miles per hour, it didn’t seem like we were traveling at all because we were a long way from the shore. We passed the mouth of the Kelly River and saw a cabin on the bank of the Kelly. We hadn’t seen any other people since the bush plane left. Bill said to me “If a boat were to come along, how much would pay to have them tow us into Noatak?” I said “I would pay $25.00,” and Bill Said “What a cheapskate.” No more than ten minutes later a motor boat passed us and I yelled “Would you tow us into Noatak for $100.00?” They made a quick “U” turn in our direction. They first tried to hook on with a rope but the raft kept fishtailing so, they beached the boat, had lunch of caribou soup, and put our now deflated raft, us and all our cargo into their boat.
There were five people in the boat in addition to Bill and Myself. The owner was of European decent and a teacher in Kotzebue. Whittier and his wife and another lady are Inupiak Eskimos. There was even an Ainu who told me that he was a whaler by profession. The boat was traveling slow because the owner had failed to fill up with gas at Noatak Village and they were afraid that they would run out. Still, we arrived at an island across from Noatak Village in about six hours. They dropped us there, but via UHF radio, Whittier called one of his sons to meet us with ATVs for the ride into the village. They noticed the fish that Bill had caught and Whittier said that his mother would cook that up for all of us to enjoy. We never saw that fish again.
Whittier and his wife (each was on their second marriage), had nine children between them, ranging in age from young children to sons in their twenties. They invited us to eat dinner of caribou stew, with them and to spend the night in their BIA cottage.
We had arrived in Noatak Village a day earlier than we had expected so we had a day to explore. There are about 450 residence and that makes Noatak one of the largest bush communities. The town includes an airport, a post office, an ACC store (Alaska Commercial Corp.), a native store, and 40 or 50 BIA cottages all exactly the same. There is a building that houses the National Guard 1st Scout Battalion, 297 Infantry. Lots of motor boats, snowmobiles and ATVs, everywhere you that you look. There were even some full-size SUVs and pickups. We were told that the vehicles are delivered to the boat ramp via a ferry and everyone in the community helps pull them up the ramp.
There still remained one of the original buildings, at the time about 80 years old, which is a remnant from the community that the BIA built in the 1920s, as part of their effort to convince the Noatak People to give up their seminomadic ways. There were also some museum quality relics just lying beside the road; a wooden dog sled and a wooden fishing boat. Lots caribou and moose antlers were just laying around. The people were all friendly and we thoroughly enjoyed our visit. Finally, we had to leave and fly back to Kotzebue on the mail plane.
I’ve hunted and toured in Alaska five times since then and although all of those visits have been good, none was quite the adventure as our hunt on the Kug.

That’s more like it KC. Just like being there vicariously. Being the gun loonies that we are, what did you and Bill use to drop those caribou?

My “Best Hunt” was my first hunt to Namibia in 2012, at the age of 65. The first morning, I zeroed my Winchester Model 70 in .300 WSM, and we headed out to the bush on a 30,000 acre no fence ranch. At about 11:00 AM, as we sat in an elevated blind, a 40” Gemsbok bull appeared in the distance. When he got to 224 yards, I told my Professional Hunter Jan that I could make that shot. I held steady straight up his front leg and squeezed off a perfect shot. He ran perhaps 50 yards and dropped. Approaching him, I was overcome with how beautiful he was and how big his body was. We ate his backstraps that night, cooked over a mopane fire, and it tasted like the best Filet Mignon I’ve ever tasted. Later that same trip, I shot a 54” Kudu bull, a Trophy Warthog, 2 Baboons, a Jackal, and a trophy Springbok. I ate like a king, smoked a few Cuban cigars I bought in Frankfort on the way over, and drank a few Tafel Lager Beers. Since that trip, I’ve gone on four more trips to Namibia, and the hunting has gotten better every trip.

About 15 years ago, i realized that i was forgetting the dates of some of my more memorable hunts. So, i started a word doc that recounted the stories of my hunting and inserted pictures from the hunts. I update every year and read through the now 54 page 70 MB document. As it turns out, i have had a great time hunting...go figure. One story almost always gives me goose bumps.

Short version: My 13yr old shot a bear that measured 18 4/8 with a 9.3X62.

Longer version: He's a little competitive with his older brother and thought he had to have a bear since his brother didnt have one. But, bear hunting can be a low percentage hunt so keeping him motivated for days took all the calmness and patience i could muster. 3 days into the hunt, a bow hunter (a very kind bow hunter) gave us a tip that a bear was hitting a gut pile about an hour drive from where we were. In fact, there were two and all he asked is that we didn't shoot the blonde as he had a bear licenses. We broke camp and headed out.
We didn't arrive until late afternoon. We met the bow hunter at his camp who showed us basically where to go...just below timberline. Being late and looking at a climb, i dumped everything out of the pack except the absolute necessities and off we went. It took a while to climb and get into a good prone supported position below the pile. Once there, it started to rain and of course, we didn't have any rain gear. Laying there now with cold rain soaking us, my son began to shiver and finally said "dad, im cold, can we go". I convinced him that the bear would come, we just had to wait. This happened two more times and after a total of 40 min, he had enough. I had to do something to get him to stick it out till dark. So, i decided to climb above the gut pile which would take 20 min but would warm us up.
From the new spot, best we could do was a sitting position. After only 15 min of waiting, the bear showed up 200yds below us...almost where we were before. He was using a Savage 99 in 308 Win that i downloaded a little to reduce recoil for him. It was zeroed at 100 (the only distance we shot it before the season) which was also our self imposed max range. I had the 9.3 which was zeroed at 200 (I had a bear license as well). He asked if he could shoot and i said "no, it's too far". Then he asked if he could use mine and i said, "no, the recoil is too heavy, it's likely to really hurt you". While we are talking, the bear moved back into the woods and the disappointment fell over my son like a coup-de-gras to the cold rain. I again had to convince him to be patient, that bear really wants to get at that gut pile which was only 40 yds below us.
After thinking about the past 3 days, the last 2 hours, and knowing that this was as good a chance at a bear as you could get, i decided (convinced myself) to let him use the 9.3...hoping that from a sitting position over crossed sticks, he would roll with the recoil. Yeah, what dad gets it right every time...i immediately started working the story i was going to tell his mom. Anyway, with light quickly fading i myself began to doubt if the bear would show up in time and knew what a bitter, cold, wet, defeated and long drive home it would be as this was our last day.
Then i saw the bear step back out at the same place 200yds away. As i pointed it out to my son, he asked if he could shoot it. I said only if it stops and is broadside and i continued to coach him in being very, very certain the crosshairs were steady and exactly where he wanted the bullet to go and to be very "BOOM!!!", he apparently didn't need to hear the rest of the story. I looked to see the bear spinning in circles and rolling and knew it was a good shot then I realized I needed to see how much damage he incurred. When I looked at him, it almost brought tears to my eyes, in fact even as I write this im getting "misty". He had the biggest smile conveying the most excitement i have ever seen on him and no blood. He said he never felt the gun but his ears were ringing a little and then proceeded to thank me profusely for talking him into waiting. I doubt he will ever thank me like that again. We didn't get home until 4:30 AM and of course, i didn't have a camera with me on the side of the hill; it didn't make the weight cut. The picture is after it was skinned and everything packed back to the Jeep. Like i said, a long story but one that gets me every time.

Awesome stories gentlemen.
Centennial, I have kept diaries on our hunts that my wife has accompanied me on. It's amazing the little oddities and blown stalks that you forget over the years and how fresh the whole experience is when you revisit your writing.
Thanks!